‘You’re no more a journalist than I am, are you?’
Oh hell, he thought. She’s probably seen me and Baker talking in her crystal ball or something. Her hand was on his lapel. She’s after a hair! One hair and a lump of clay, and she’ll have me in intensive care!
‘No,’ she went on. ‘All you thought was maybe you could con me into letting you take a couple of saucy snaps. Well, no way, buster. You’d better stick to poking your lens through changing-room windows!’
The hand on his lapel suddenly thrust him backwards so hard that he crashed against the car.
The impact woke Whitey who’d just managed to get back to sleep after the jogger’s alarm. He appeared at the open window to snarl his opinion that enough was enough and what did a cat need to do to get some sleep round here anyway?
At least, that was how Sixsmith interpreted the intercession.
But Meg Merchison took a step back, her eyes fixed on the snarling black head which with its white patch around the left eye looked not unlike some South Sea devil mask.
She’s scared, thought Sixsmith, recalling Baker’s reaction to Whitey’s stare. These people reckon cats have got the power or something and Merchison thinks Whitey’s springing to my defence.
He said firmly, ‘It’s OK, Whitey. Nothing to trouble yourself with here, my man.’
The cat’s snarl turned into a yawn to show that he certainly wasn’t troubled and what on earth did Joe think he was on about? Then he subsided on to the seat and closed his eyes once more.
Sixsmith decided this psychic line was one he might usefully pursue. He said, ‘No, honestly, Miss Merchison, I don’t want to take your photo. It was just that when I looked at your picture in the paper, I got this feeling that there was something more going on than the story told me. I often get these feelings, sort of psychic you could call them …’
She now returned her gaze from the car window to his face.
‘Are you a freelance journalist?’ she asked.
He might have been wrong about the crystal ball, but he didn’t doubt the ability of those piercing violet eyes to distinguish fact from fiction.
‘No,’ he said pulling out one of his cards. ‘My name’s Sixsmith. I’m a private inquiry agent.’
‘And you think I’m worth inquiring into, is that it?’
‘Like I said, I just sometimes get a feeling. Blood sympathy, some folk call it. It’s like sort of ambulance chasing, I suppose. I’m sorry.’
He made as if to get into the car.
She looked to left and right, and said, ‘Doesn’t look as if my ride’s coming. How about you giving me a lift home?’
Joe Sixsmith opened the passenger door, scooped up Whitey and dropped him on to the rear seat.
‘My pleasure, ma’am,’ he said.
CHAPTER 9
As they drove along, Meg Merchison lit up a cigarette and Sixsmith opened his window, not too ostentatiously, but she noticed.
‘Scared of the secondaries, huh?’ she said, puffing a jet of smoke in his direction.
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Used to be a forty-a-day man and there’s no going back. But Whitey doesn’t care for it.’
‘No?’ She looked at the cat who’d retired to the back seat. Then she shrugged, leaned across Sixsmith so that he felt her breasts resting heavy on his left arm, and threw the cigarette out of the open window.
She then settled back in her seat and Sixsmith said, ‘We are going in the right direction, are we?’
‘Depends what you’re aiming at,’ she mocked. ‘You don’t know where I live, then?’
‘Why should I?’
‘You’re a detective. You could’ve been trailing me for weeks for all I know.’
‘You reckon?’
She looked at him, then laughed her full-throated laugh.
‘Maybe not,’ she said.
She was very restless, but it was not an irritating restlessness. Even in repose she was like a luxury sports car, parked for the moment but with its engine running. She reached forward and opened the glove compartment and began to rummage among the debris.
‘Anything I can help you with?’ inquired Sixsmith.
‘Just nosey,’ she said. ‘Where’s your gatsby?’
‘Eh?’
‘Your gun. I thought PI’s always carried a gun in their glove compartments.’
‘It’s at the cleaners,’ said Sixsmith.
‘A wisecrack! I was beginning to have serious doubts. You spend a lot of time at the doctor’s. Nothing communicable, I hope?’
She’d found some old appointment cards.
‘I had trouble with my back,’ he said.
‘He fix it?’
‘He gave me some tablets to fix the pain till it fixed itself.’
‘That’s about their limit. Mechanics, most of them. You still get trouble?’
He shrugged, winced.
‘A twinge now and then.’
‘Yeah?’ She reached out her right arm and he felt her fingers probing around the top of his spine.
‘Talk about tense!’ she said. ‘You could bounce rocks off that. Relax!’
He felt her fingers caressing his flesh in tiny circles.
‘That better?’ she said after a while.
‘My back feels better,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s not doing anything for my driving.’
‘Another joke! Maybe you’re for real. Next left.’
She withdrew her hand. It felt like a serious loss.
‘The house with the red door,’ she said.
It was no gingerbread cottage in the woods with a cauldron bubbling over an open fire, but a tall narrow house in a long Victorian terrace.
She got out of the car in a single sinuous movement.
‘Well, come on,’ she said. ‘Don’t just sit there. We’ve got unfinished business.’
‘Sorry?’
‘This blood sympathy of yours. I’d like to bear more about it.’
She ran lightly up the steps to the door. Sixsmith got out, said, ‘On guard,’ to Whitey and followed her.
The house had a rich spicy smell mingled with something more animal. It reminded Sixsmith of the alley that ran in back of The Golden Peony’s kitchens in the Heifitz Centre.
‘Is that all yours?’ asked Sixsmith, who could see no sign of the expected division into flats.
‘That’s right. I sometimes take lodgers, but at the moment there’s just little me. Not looking for lodgings, are you, Joe? Don’t mind if I call you Joe, do you?’
‘No. And no,’ said Sixsmith. ‘You rent, or does it belong?’
‘It’s all mine, by right of inheritance. What we need is a drink.’
She led him into a high-ceilinged sitting-room furnished with heavy Victorian armchairs in chapped leather. Sixsmith sat down carefully but found the upholstering sound and comfortable. The woman went to a huge sideboard and produced a matching bottle of whisky and a pair of tumblers.
As she sat opposite him on a Chesterfield like a coal barge, she undid the top button of her blouse but he still couldn’t see if she was wearing the locket. She caught the direction of his gaze and smiled. Unable to explain he wasn’t ogling her tits, he flushed. She pushed the bottle and the glasses towards him.
‘You pour,’ she said.
He measured out equal amounts, generous but not excessive.
‘Here’s looking at you,’ she said, drinking. ‘So what about this feeling you’ve got, Joe? Still got it, have you, now you’ve seen me in the flesh?’
‘Oh yes, it’s still there,’ he said. ‘I can’t explain it but there’s something … I’ve had it from photos before … There was this guy and I got this feeling he was going to get killed in a plane crash, so I rang him up and told him.’
He paused as if bringing the incident back to mind. The real trouble was that invention wasn’t his forte and he quickly ran out of steam.
‘Go on,’ she said, looking really interested.
‘Well, it was like a sort of dream or a visi
on maybe, I saw him in a plane and I saw the plane coming down … it came low over a shoreline, there was this village and then there were some mountains, and the pilot had to make his mind up where to try to land …’
He thought he was doing rather well, having tapped some hidden spring of inspiration, but she was grinning broadly.
‘You’re having me on, aren’t you, Joe Sixsmith? That’s that old movie The Night My Number Came Up. I saw it on the box a few weeks back!’
So had he. He found himself wanting to return her grin and shamefacedly confess. Instead: ‘Yes,’ he said seriously. ‘That’s exactly what the man said. I felt really stupid. But I stopped feeling stupid when that Dutch Jumbo went down and I saw his name on the passenger list.’
Invention might not be his strong point but when it came to simple fact-based lying, he was no slouch.
He saw the smile leave her face.
Gotcha! he said to himself. Believe one stupid thing and you’re a sitting target for every stupid thing going.
‘So what’s this feeling you’ve got about me?’ she asked. ‘I’m not mad about air travel anyway.’
‘No, it’s nothing like that. It was just when I saw the pic, I got this feeling first of all of, I don’t know, tremendous relief.’
It was a long shot but not all that long. It was easy to see her as a wild freewheeling spirit who wouldn’t hesitate to put a rival out of the way. But Sixsmith guessed there was a long gap between that and being willing to knock off a couple of innocent bystanders en route. It might have seemed a great idea in prospect to bring Gwen Baker’s plane tumbling down, but when it actually happened and she came face to face with the reality of living bodies being twisted and mangled in the wreckage …
Hell’s bells, I’m beginning to accept that she did it, he thought.
She was nodding her head.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was relieved. Mightily relieved. But anybody would be, when you see an accident and the people involved come out OK. You didn’t come out of your way just to tell me that, surely?’
‘No,’ said Joe, seeking invention again and as usual falling back as far as possible on the truth. ‘There was something else, a feeling like you were in danger, like someone had it in for you. A woman, I think. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but it wasn’t nice, something sort of pointed, like sticking a knife in you, but not really that …’
He saw he’d got to her now. But before she could respond there was a ringing at the front door, a dull truncated note like a cracked chapel bell. Perhaps there was a witches’ mail-order company that supplied such things.
She went out, not bothering to close the door behind her, so Sixsmith didn’t have to eavesdrop.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said.
‘Meg, I’m sorry, I got held up, bloody faculty meeting went on and on …’
‘I’m glad there’s one of your faculties that goes on and on. So I’m just to be left standing around, freezing my tits off, while you and the rest of those geriatrics plan how to be even more boring next term? Sod that, Jerry. Sod that to Sodom and Gomorrah!’
She was good, thought Sixsmith. Having little talent for vulgar abuse himself, he always appreciated it in others.
‘Look, can I come in? I’m sure you don’t want the whole street taking notes.’
‘Come in, is it? Isn’t this a hospital visiting night? Where’s the grapes and flowers?’
‘I don’t have to go to the hospital. She discharged herself this morning.’
‘Then she’ll have been slaving over a hot stove for you all day. Better not let your dinner spoil, Jerry.’
Sixsmith, curious to have a glimpse of Gerald the Hyphen, rose and went into the bay window which gave him a side-on view of a tall, craggily handsome man who in normal circumstances probably had some of the presence of the late great John Wayne, but presently looked more like Norman Wisdom in retreat.
He was saying with an effort at insouciance, ‘OK, Meg, you’ve made your point, but no need to labour it, eh? I’ll give her a ring, say that the meeting’s likely to drag on for another couple of hours …’
‘A couple of hours?’ she interrupted. ‘Now what good’s a couple of hours going to be to you? Way things have been lately, we could work on it for a couple of days and get nowhere.’
‘Now that’s not fair,’ he said, growing angry. ‘I’ve been under a lot of strain lately. These things happen. It’s a temporary crisis. A little loving care, a little more patience …’
‘So it’s my fault, is it?’ she cried.
‘I’m not saying that, love, of course not. Though you do come on a bit strong …’
If this was an attempt at a scene-lightening joke, it failed miserably.
‘Do I now?’ she cried. ‘Well, I wish I could say the same for you, boyo! Good night.’
The door slammed with a violence that made the sitting-room walls shake.
Sixsmith hastily resumed his seat. Meg Merchison came back into the room like the wild west wind. She was utterly gorgeous in her wrath.
‘Did you hear that?’ she said. ‘The bastard can’t get it up and he says it’s my fault. Three weeks it’s been, and I’ve sat here like patience on a daffodil, saying it doesn’t matter, just take your time … And now it’s my fault!’
Her eyes fixed on Joe Sixsmith’s face. There was something of calculation in them, also something of something else, and Sixsmith felt a tremor of fear run through his flesh, also a tremor of something else.
‘Do you think it could be my fault, Joe?’ she asked in a softer, almost languid voice.
‘I doubt it,’ he said trying to keep his voice from trembling.
Her hand was at the second button of her blouse. She undid it and it was as if the movement released a spring which swept all her clothes off her. He had never seen a woman undress so quickly. He registered that her clothed body had made no claims you could get her for under the Trades Description Act. And he also registered she was wearing the locket, but only because it brushed his eyelashes as she stooped over him, impatient with the relative slowness of his disrobing.
‘Careful,’ she said, undoing the clasp and tossing it aside. ‘Can’t have you going blind, not just yet.’
She was as dextrous with his clothing as she’d been with her own.
‘There,’ she said, drawing back a little way. ‘So that’s what you mean by blood sympathy. I knew it couldn’t be my fault.’
‘Come here,’ said Joe Sixsmith hoarsely.
He started getting dressed again about midnight.
She opened one eye and said languidly, ‘Where’re you going?’
‘I’ve got a hungry cat in the car,’ said Sixsmith.
‘Oh yes. OK. Keep in touch, Joe. Especially if you get any more funny feelings about me.’
‘Oh I will, I will,’ promised Joe.
She went back to sleep. She lay so relaxed with her limbs sprawled in an attitude of such abandonment that he almost went back to her. But a little voice at the top of his head whispered, ‘Don’t push your luck, Joe boy. OK, so there’s no knotted string out on you, but you’re not in training for this kind of thing and how’re you going to feel if it turns out your eyes are greedier than your belly?’
At the door he took one last look back.
Oh shoot! he thought. Why am I such a reasonable man?
Then he left.
As he fumbled in his pocket for the car key, his fingers touched what felt like a fine metal chain. He drew it out, and saw the ruby cameo locket dangling in his hand. It must have landed on his jacket when Meg threw it aside, and then slipped into the pocket as he picked it up. Or could it have found its way in with a little help from an enemy?
No, I’m not going to start believing that garbage!
But what was he going to do with the locket?
He got into his car to check on Whitey while he thought things through.
The cat, seemingly untroubled by his unexpectedly long absence, crawle
d on to his knee, yawning and purring at the same time.
‘So what to do, Whitey?’ said Sixsmith. I feel a real rat stealing that lady’s locket after what she’s just done for me. So should I just push it back through the letter-box and go home feeling noble?’
Whitey gave one last huge yawn, then sat upright looking fully awake.
‘Yeah, but when I wake up tomorrow, will I feel so noble then, is that what you’re saying?’ asked Sixsmith. ‘I mean, what I’ve got here is what I was hired to get, and if Ms Baker was telling the truth, I’m just recovering property her husband reported stolen. And unless I believe all that other garbage, which I don’t, losing it ain’t going to harm Meg Merchison, who incidentally took advantage of me only because Jerry the Hyphen is having this personal problem.’
Whitey burped gently.
‘You’re right,’ said Sixsmith. ‘A man’s got to eat. And a cat too. Tell you what, why don’t we sleep on it?’
He switched on the car radio, turned the key in the ignition and drove slowly away.
CHAPTER 10
The radio was tuned to a music station which was playing the kind of music disc jockeys think suitable for insomniacs and night workers. The streets were quiet. On weekdays Luton died at midnight, except for a couple of clubs where those with too much energy could find various ways of burning it off.
Some big band was playing a nice swinging version of Lazy River which Sixsmith on the whole liked, though he didn’t think the background bells altogether worked.
In fact they were getting downright cacophonous. Then the headlights of the fire engine exploded the darkness behind him and the mighty machine went rushing past in a glory of light and noise.
‘There’s always some poor sod worse off than we are, Whitey,’ mused Sixsmith.
A few minutes later as he turned into Greco Street, he realized that this time the poor sod was Mr Nayyar.
‘Sorry, Whitey,’ said Sixsmith, parking the car and getting out.
At least the family seemed to be all right. He could see Mrs Nayyar and her children outlined in a neighbour’s doorway while Mr Nayyar was having an animated conversation with two firemen playing a hose through the smoke-blackened entrance to his shop.
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